View full sizeOhio Gov. John Kasich, left, leads Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald 46 percent to 37 percent in a new poll released Thursday morning by Quinnipiac University.The Plain Dealer

Ohio Gov. John Kasich might be running out of Republican allies in the General Assembly these days, but Ohio voters at large remain satisfied with his performance.

A poll released Thursday by Quinnipiac University placed Kasich's job approval rating at 52 percent -- a hair off his all-time high of 53 percent in February, but a sign he is holding steady at a time when his budget plan is in shambles.

The survey of 1,138 registered voters also showed Kasich leading Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, his likely Democratic challenger in 2014, 46 percent to 37 percent. Given the poll's margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, the state of that prospective race is essentially unchanged from two months ago, when Kasich was up by 10 points.

Kasich owes his edge to men and independents. Among men he leads FitzGerald 51 percent to 32 percent; among women they are tied at 41 percent. Independent voters give the governor a 20-point cushion over FitzGerald.

Quinnipiac also polled Kasich against former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray has not indicated whether he will run. He trails Kasich 45 percent to 38 percent.

"The fact that [Kasich] leads his two potential Democratic opponents by 20 and 17 points respectively among the key independent voting bloc is a good indication that he starts the campaign with the voting public seeing him positively," Peter Brown, assistant director of the Hamden, Conn., school's Polling Institute, said in an email announcing the results.

Overall, 46 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of Kasich. And 46 percent believe he deserves a second term.

Those numbers are below the 50 percent threshold that makes incumbents confident of re-election. Though 73 percent of his fellow Republicans have a favorable opinion, that number is down from 82 percent in February. Likewise, 81 percent of GOP voters thought Kasich merited re-election two months ago. Today that number is down to 74 percent. And an 85 percent approval rating among Republicans in February eroded to 76 percent this month, according to survey results.

What's happened since then? Kasich's budget proposal has unraveled due to a lack of support in his own party. To lower personal income and small business taxes, Kasich has called for a broader state sales tax and higher taxes on oil and gas drillers. He also has pushed to expand Medicaid for low-income Ohioans. Republicans have gutted the bill, while conservative activists have questioned whether the governor still espouses the Tea Party values he rallied behind in 2010.

But Kasich's losses aren't FitzGerald's gains. Republicans prefer Kasich over FitzGerald 86 percent to 2 percent -- an even wider margin than in February, when it was 86 to 5. And 72 percent of Republicans polled this month described Kasich's politics as "about right" as opposed to too liberal or too conservative. That question wasn't asked in February.

The new poll also shows Ohioans are more optimistic about the economy, a trend that tends to favor incumbents.

"Polls have never been a driver for Gov. Kasich," Ohio Republican Party spokesman Matthew Henderson said Thursday. "He's just focused on pro-growth policies that create jobs for Ohioans and helping to turn our state around."

For FitzGerald, who is preparing a campaign against Kasich but has not officially declared his candidacy, name-recognition remains a high hurdle. But this new poll shows the former Lakewood mayor is becoming more familiar as he travels the state and receives more news coverage. In February, 80 percent hadn't heard enough about FitzGerald to form an opinion of him. Today that number is down to 76 percent. His favorable-unfavorable split is 14 percent to 8 percent.

Half of the voters surveyed weren't sure if FitzGerald "has the right kind of experience" to be governor. Twenty-four percent of respondents said he does, while 26 percent -- including 14 percent of Democrats -- said he does not.

FitzGerald's team deferred to the Ohio Democratic Party for response to the poll.

"John Kasich is in a precarious position for an incumbent governor as less than half of Ohioans are prepared to support his re-election," party spokesman Jerid Kurtz said. "With the 2014 election more than a year and a half a way, there's plenty of time for Ohioans to learn about Kasich's partisan preference to put his corrupt cronies ahead of the middle-class."

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